St. Pete Catalyst

Journalist

Mark Parker

Brian Benedict

Arcee.ai

Arcee AI: The Small Language Model Company

Arcee AI is revolutionizing the AI landscape with Small Language Models (SLMs) that power cutting-edge applications like Agentic AI Workflows (Orchestra) and Model Routing (Conductor). As the first end-to-end AI model and application solution built within a single system, Arcee delivers unmatched efficiency, security, and flexibility.

Our technology enables cost-effective AI deployment, reducing compute overhead while maximizing performance. With seamless integration, businesses benefit from a fully connected AI ecosystem. Security is a top priority—Arcee can be deployed in VPCs, on-premises, or in the cloud, ensuring compliance and data protection. Designed for both technical and non-technical users, our solution makes advanced AI accessible to all.

At Arcee, we’re redefining the future of AI by making powerful, scalable, and secure small-model technology available to everyone.

Highlights so far
✅ Built & Led High-Performance GTM & CS Teams – Scaled a team of 10+ across AEs, BDRs, SEs, CS, and Marketing to drive exponential growth.

Revenue Growth & Market Impact
✅ $0 to $3M+ Organic Revenue in Under 1.5 Years – Spearheaded a hyper-growth strategy that delivered rapid revenue expansion.
✅ 290% QoQ Revenue Growth – Transitioned from founder-led to sales-led motion, achieving nearly 3x revenue growth quarter-over-quarter.

Fundraising & Strategic Partnerships
✅ Secured Nearly $50M in VC Funding – Partnered with top-tier investors across multiple funding rounds (Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, and Series A+).
✅ Built a Scalable Sales Engine – Designed and executed a repeatable, scalable GTM playbook for sustained growth.

Co-Founder

Various Startups

Working as an advisor to numerous start-ups across technology, software, with a specific focus on sales execution, sales management, sales scale-up and team building. 

Highlights include 
Picked by Ben Horowitz of A16Z to Lead Sisu out of Pre-Revenue to $1m+ ARR in under 1 year and help secure 55m B Round led by NEA, A16Z.  Built from scratch ICP, sales collateral, pricing, strategy, team build. 

Brought Narrator from 200k to 1.2m in under 9 months. Building all sales strategy, decks, execution, POC plans and pricing models. 

Companies include: 
Sisu, Clearfind, Maya.ai, VinSocial, CitiBeats, Activeloop, Anecdote, Kawa, Narrator, Luca, Agency, Stanza, Typedef and others

Sales Advisor / Investor

Hugging Face

Set up Hugging Faces repeatable sales motion, hired and trained AEs, Bdr, SEs and grew revenue 215% QoQ.  Helped Hugging Face with landing a 2B valuation on a 100m C round.

Head of Global Sales (First Sales Leader)

Tecton

More than doubled the customer count in 1st year and increased revenue 245% YoY. 
Established a PLG strategy that decreased time to conversion from 90+ days to under 45 days. 
Implemented a selling process that was unique with no sales rep 1st touch demonstrations and light touch 1 week POCs that moved conversion rates from >10% to 65%+
Grew and trained sales reps, SDRs, and executed on plan to scale sales including all sales training materials, role-playing, decks, sales hiring scorecards, and sales methodology
Brought in first multi-million dollar agreement and helped to land first deals in multiple categories
Trained and hired a team of 3 reps, 2 SEs, 1 SDR.

Pentaho from Hitachi Vantara

In 2016 as an IC - Grew a dormant territory in the Northeast from under $500K to over $5mm in 9 months on a full annualized quota of over $2mm highlighted by vertical work in Banking and Media & Entertainment.
Expanded presence at major banks and brought in new banking client logos in less then 6 months. 
For 2016 Ranked #1 in US Markets over 40 reps. (Percentage to Goal 205%). #3 Globally.

In 2017 ranked #1 in the US Markets over 40 reps (percentage to goal 212%) #1 Globally.

Presidents Club qualifier 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019

2018 Promoted to Regional Director in charge of all Financial Services Globally. Head count of 20+ including Global Account Managers, Solution Engineers, SDRs.

Implemented first alternative investment strategy for banks looking to capture a self service analytics use case with structured and unstructured data for robo-advisory. 

Grew FS Pentaho Revenue from 115m to over 250m in three year period. Partnered and worked with brands including Citi, BNY Mellon, Comcast, Blackrock, JPMC, Bank of America, Credit Suisse, State Street.

Global Sales Director - Financial Services 

Quantifind

As the second individual contributor sold individually $7.5m on a $2.5m quota Logos included Comcast, Taco Bell, Citi, Moet-Hennessy, Pernod-Riccard,  Ciroc, Wells Fargo, Dunkin' Brands, Tim Horton's, L'Oreal, Verizon and others.

Vice President  - East

NetBase Quid

Led the sales team in brand sales two years in a row generating over 2mm/year in new revenue and promoted to manage the East team of five outside reps. 

Logos include Credit Suisse, Lowe's, Viacom, AMC Networks, A&E Networks, Aereo, ABC, Disney, Target, Kenneth Cole, Time, Inc., Ralph Lauren, IFF, Tory Burch, and others

Vice President - East

inmoment

Senior Sales Director

Forrester

Senior Account Executive

Provident Corporate Finance

Associate

Experienced and highly accomplished sales professional working in early stage start-ups to help grow revenue and build a repeatable sales process. My passion is selling disruptive solutions that bring real value to organizations.  My abilities span building sales and constructing the right go to market approach, collaborating and leading positive culture growth, and generating repeatable revenue quickly. My background blends a deep knowledge of selling to both business, analytics, data science, and IT professionals coupled with solid analytical and team management skills. Proven track record of over-achievement, generating new business organically through thoughtful interactions while cultivating new relationships with key decision-makers.

Arcee's mission is to help enterprises build SLLMs (Specialized Large Language Models) that are more accurate with your own data, deployed in your own environment and with a domain adaption system that allows for control and security over the entire end to end process. Arcee is building context adaptive LLM's through our domain adapted language model system (DALM) first ever RAG solution training the retriever and fine tuning the generator.  

DALM encompasses in-domain pretrained LLM's, fine tuned retriever models and tuned generator LLMs - all in one system. DALM allows you to get LLM's into production fast while creating a trustworthy and factual system. Specifically DALM mitigates hallucinations, inaccuracies, the constant need to retrain your model, while enabling dynamic data sources, having a clear indication of the source, and reduces infra and latency challenges.

To learn more ---> www.arcee.ai

I hate consultants. So why did I start a consulting company? 

The perception I had was these organizations offer alot of talk but not alot of action.  Consultants are good at speaking then moving on to the next project never looking back. 

That is exactly the opposite of what we are building with Eliza.  Our team are AI practitioners. You don't get hired here for being able to talk AI without real hands on production experience. All of our people have sat on the other side building AI at large organizations, running Center of Excellence in AI, building AI from the ground up. 

We are a team of human doers. We don't love spending years on projects we want to move quickly and get things stood up in production fast.  We know that AI is a race and the ones who will win want to act now. We fly in and stay. We work with or for your team. 

Eliza is born to help those companies who are done talking and don't want another arm chair quarterback.  

We call ourselves a services company because we work alongside our clients.  We aren't a slidedeck first company. We are a lets do company. 

Actions speak louder then words. Come find out but please don't call us consultants. 🤢

AI Transformation | Founder & Builder | Practical AI And Training I X-Hugging Face I 2X Founder

In 2023 you could get VC money if you had a background in AI

In 2024 it was all about vertical AI solution.

In 2025 it was  building agents 

In 2026 its going to be all three 

The bar is getting higher and it should - right now I don't think we need more AI start-ups but more AI in production 

We are taking a different path Eliza 

Building AI solutions and training for the world's most AI hungry companies who are looking for production edge. 

And we are growing rapidly - we need more Forward Deployed Engineers  

If you want a change of pace to build in production working with the best companies in the world - this is it!

Transitioning into consulting has been straightforward for one reason
Most services firms walk into the first call like it’s an intake form. They ask broad questions, take notes, and delay any real point of view until later.

That approach is comfortable, but it’s lazy. It wastes the one thing a prospect is testing in the first meeting

Do you actually understand my world, and can you help me make a decision
At Eliza, we treat the first meeting like a working session, not a discovery interview.

We show up with the homework done. We’ve already formed a hypothesis about what’s broken, what matters, and what a better future looks like. We come with an opinion on where AI can drive impact, what will fail if it’s done wrong, and what the first practical step should be.

We still ask questions, but they’re sharper. They’re used to validate and refine, not to outsource the thinking to the client.

The result is simple...We create value immediately, we sound different than every other firm, and we move the conversation forward on day one.

I first heard of Suno at an MIT event.  When someone said this is going to change music as we know it - This was two years ago and I still remember when they asked the audience for ideas to generate a song....And it did. 🤯 

The app has continually gotten better, song quality, creativity, heck I even like some of the songs machine generated here better then what is on the radio.

So of course I had to try a theme song for Eliza 

Give it a listen and let me know what you think - if you are a Country fan you might really love this

https://lnkd.in/e3nbMDJy

Open article: Eliza Country Jam by suno.com

So excited about the work Eliza and the joint work with Kickdrum as we look to continue to add the right mix of skills for our clients.  Welcome to the team!

Big News! To meet surging demand for production-ready OpenAI solutions, Eliza and Kickdrum are joining forces and launching the OpenAI Technical Training Academy 🎉 The initial cohort of 40 engineers will provide immediate, plug-in delivery capacity for client projects. 
 
Companies need dependable teams that can ship, secure, and operate AI at scale. This Academy turns talent into predictable delivery capacity so customers move from pilot to production faster.
 
Trainees will work directly with the OpenAI stack - the Responses API, Codex, AgentKit, and ChatGPT Enterprise - so graduates will be ready for immediate client work.
 
As part of the partnership, Ryan Kennedy, Principal and Co-founder at Kickdrum, will serve as AI-CTO for Eliza, bringing more than 20 years of software development expertise for large enterprises.
 
Read the official press release here → https://lnkd.in/gZ5Zw5wQ

PE Seller - Company today is priced at 500m given comparable deals and financials
PE Buyer - do they have any AI built into their product? product? internal processes?
Pe Seller - not yet, but working towards that
PE Buyer - I will pay $375m
PE seller - You just discounted it 25%...why? 
PE Buyer - For them to grow they need to add AI to their work - we don't pay premiums for non-AI companies

This is a real conversation, summarized.

Time. To. Wake. Up.

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Mark Parker

Brian Benedict

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taplio

The Battle

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Brian Benedict

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Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Brian Benedict's LinkedIn Performance

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